Gwyn Morgan: Robbing farmers to pay for battery-worker jobs
financialpost.comLast month, echoing a U.S. announcement three months earlier, the federal Liberals announced a 100 per cent tariff on the import of Chinese electric vehicles (EVs). China wasted no time striking back where it would hurt most, launching an anti-dumping investigation into Canadian canola exports. While there’s no evidence of dumping, there’s a very high likelihood the move is a procedural pretext to halting canola imports. China has long been the biggest canola buyer and was expected to purchase 70 per cent of this year’s bumper crop.
China’s move was predictable, given that it blocked canola imports following the arrest of Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou in 2019. Canola producers in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba lost some $2 billion as a result of that boycott.
The Trudeau government’s press release described Chinese EVs as an “extraordinary threat” to Canada’s auto workers. But the reality is that Canada produces zero EVs, and there are no projects on the table to do so. What is on the table are subsidies — $50-billion worth — to Honda, Swedish automaker Northvolt, Ford, Stellantis, Volkswagen and General Motors to build EV battery plants in Ontario and Quebec.
The American situation is entirely different from Canada’s. The U.S. manufacture EVs, but the U.S./China trading relationship involves multiple industries with no obvious target for China to strike back at. This makes Trudeau’s mimicking of the American move profoundly irresponsible. That the Liberal government would put canola farmers at risk in order to protect jobs in Ontario and Quebec is despicable but hardly out of character. The Trudeau Liberals have a long record of making decisions that harm the West — and western farmers, in particular.
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